Message from the Young Brothers
Source:
Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line 
Muslim Brotherhood Youth organize conference on group's future (Photo: IkhwanWeb.com)
A one day conference in a four-star hotel in Cairo on Saturday became the most talked about political event of the week. Now that the regime that persecuted its cadres for decades has been ousted, young members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) held their first ever conference on 26 March during which they openly discussed their vision of the group's political future.
The MB's leadership was reported not only to have expressed its disapproval of the conference but to have pressured the youths to call off an event that allowed the public to see a side of the 82-year-old organisation that was hitherto invisible. The media interest was intense: just what were these young people going to say that had provoked such resistance from their leaders?
Times have certainly changed. The Doqqi hotel at which the conference was held would never have dared to host an MB event pre 25 January, yet here it was promoting the conference in the lobby through flat-screen monitors. According to Mohamed El-Qassass, one of the conference's organisers, a worker in the hotel's garage asked him if the Brotherhood was about to take over power in Egypt since it was organising a conference. El-Qassass told the story as a joke while standing at the podium, but his tone and posture exuded an air of triumphant confidence.
He told the audience that a new political parties law will be issued soon (it was issued on Monday) allowing for the formation of political parties simply by notifying the relevant authorities. "Everyone," claimed El-Qassass, "is waiting to see what the Brotherhood will offer in the political arena now." The MB leadership has yet to officially announce details of its first ever political party, revealing only the name, Freedom and Justice.
The Brotherhood's youth conference took matters further by posing some existential questions related to the logic of establishing a political party and its envisioned relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood.
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